LIVE-SHOT IS THE TARGET OF CRITICAL FIRE - Boston Globe - Apr 18, 2005
For the first time, a computer game is on the verge of being outlawed.

The game is called Live-Shot, and it has generated such a storm of outrage that legislators in Congress and 17 states are scrambling to pass laws against it.

It's hard to imagine a ban on any computer game, no matter how shocking. After all, savagely violent games like Grand Theft Auto are nowadays considered mainstream fare. How could Live-Shot possibly be worse?

By using live victims, such as deer, sheep, and antelope. In Live- Shot, the players don't try to kill digital aliens or even digital police officers, but living, breathing wildlife. They haven't actually killed any yet; the first Live-Shot hunt, held this month, was a bust. But the mere idea of using the Internet for bouts of long-distance bloodletting has unleashed nationwide fury.

John Lockwood, the game's inventor, doesn't get it. To Lockwood, Live-Shot is a logical extension of the way he's hunted all his life. It's also a way to help disabled people discover the thrill of hunting. But to an unusual coalition of animal rights activists and hunters, Live-Shot is sacrilege, an appalling exercise in remote- control slaughter.

An employee of an auto body shop in San Antonio, Lockwood is an avid hunter who shot his first deer at age 9. He and a friend came up with the idea for Live-Shot after visiting the website of a landowner who put video cameras on his land. Visitors to the site could engage in "hunts" by waiting until an animal came within range of the camera, then saving the image and e-mailing it to the landowner. Each picture of an animal was credited as a successful hunt.

Lockwood recalled that "one of the guys here at work with me, an avid hunter, said, `I wonder if he's going to put a gun with that?' And it just clicked. So I did it."

Lockwood bought a computer and a motorized camera mount of the kind used for closed-circuit security cameras. He attached a hunting rifle, a gunsight-mounted video camera, and a device that trips the gun's trigger when it receives a digital command from the computer. He set up the rig on his friend's 300-acre spread near San Antonio, which is stocked with wildlife for hunting. Then he connected the computer-controlled rifle to the Internet, and Live-Shot was born.

Live-Shot isn't just for hunting animals. For $5.95, you can schedule a session of target shooting. Players get 10 shots at an inanimate target. "We have balloons that pop, paper targets that change color," Lockwood said. "Nobody seems to have a problem with shooting targets over the Internet."

But then Lockwood took his idea one step further. Why not let visitors pay $150 to take a shot at an animal? Lockwood does most of his hunting from a "deer stand," a fixed location where the hunter waits until an unsuspecting animal strolls into range. Why not apply the same principle to Internet hunting? Just set up the rifle in an area frequented by game animals and let the hunt begin.

And the controversy.

When Lockwood began to publicize his Live-Shot business, he expected bitter denunciations from animal-rights groups, and he was not disappointed.

"It amounts to a snuff film scenario, pay-per-view slaughter," said Michael Markarian, executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States. "It makes it too easy for people to be able to engage in this behavior. It's like ordering a jacket from L.L. Bean."

What Lockwood didn't count on was the equally vehement opposition from hunting organizations.

It turns out that many traditional hunters think that picking off animals by remote control is a disgraceful parody of real hunting. "We think hunting was intended to be an outdoor activity," said Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs at the National Rifle Association. "We're really not in support of this concept."

John Monson, president of Safari Club International, an Arizona- based sporting group, went even further. Monson said his group would favor legislation to ban Internet-based hunting altogether. "This is not hunting," Monson said.

For years, efforts to ban violent video games have fizzled out. Not this time. Three states have already outlawed the Live-Shot concept Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee. Texas, Lockwood's own state, is working on a bill to put him out of business.

Hunters and animal rights activists fear that a similar company could be launched in another state without an online hunting ban.

Not if Republican Virginia congressman Tom Davis has his way. He's put forward a bill that would establish a nationwide ban on Internet hunting. "Why should someone be able to point, click, and kill?" Davis said. "It's not sporting, and it's certainly not `hunting' in the true sense of the word."

The furor has frustrated Lockwood, who sees nothing irrational or immoral about Live-Shot.

"I liken it to somebody's phobia of spiders," he said. "They don't understand what good it can do, so they have an irrational fear."

Lockwood thinks he's already done a little good. Live-Shot held its first live hunt this month. The hunter, Dale Hagberg of Ligonier, Ind., was an avid hunter until he was paralyzed in an accident 17 years ago. Live-Shot gave him a chance to bag one more animal. He didn't; no animals came within range of his gun.

Lockwood said that Live-Shot was created for people like Hagberg. He also wanted to reach out to active-duty US military personnel overseas. "They miss hunting and would like to take some time to do it."

Maybe so. But they'd better move fast, while Live-Shot is still legal.